Jacobin⁠60%

The American Revolution Was More Radical Than the Founders Wanted ⁠34%

By Ed Simon⁠0%

7/3/2026, 8:50:00 AM

BS Summary: This article contains 15 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Authority, Ambiguity (Equivocation), and Availability Heuristic, with Anecdotal as the most egregious example at 42.3% saturation with 80 hits. Analysis detected 441 faulty-reasoning hits from 189 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 41.9% and a BS Rank of ⁠34% (14,121 of 21,193 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 66.60% of the article peer group.

A popular anecdote maintains that, upon their defeat at Yorktown, Lord Charles Cornwallis’s British fife-and-drum regiment was instructed by General George Washington to perform the Royalist anthem “The World Turned Upside Down.” 
As appealing as the story is, it’s almost certainly apocryphal. 
Traditionally, the losing army would have played a melody associated with the winning side, in this case either an American or French tune. 
But Washington, supposedly denying the British the honors of war, instructed them to perform a song of their own country. 
And so Cornwallis’s men supposedly played the 1646 anthem that protested Parliament’s abolition of Advent in the years after an earlier civil war had riven the English-speaking world. 
The first mention of this story was in the elderly veteran Alexander Garden’s 1828 Anecdotes of the American Revolution, though the author himself admitted he wasn’t present at Yorktown. 
Historian Henry Phelps Johnston included the claim in his 1881 book, The Yorktown Campaign and the Surrender of Cornwallis, which would later be cited by musicologist John Tasker Howard in 1931’s The Music of George Washington’s Time. 
Article reasoning-pattern comparisonThis article: 15.3%Ed Simon: 3.8%Jacobin: 5.8%Confirmation Bias15.3%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 0.4%Anchoring Bias0.0%This article: 16.9%Ed Simon: 8.5%Jacobin: 2.6%Availability Heuristic16.9%This article: 14.8%Ed Simon: 3.7%Jacobin: 1.3%Representativeness Heuristic14.8%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 1.8%Hindsight Bias0.0%This article: 5.3%Ed Simon: 2.6%Jacobin: 2.3%Overconfidence Bias5.3%This article: 15.9%Ed Simon: 6.6%Jacobin: 6.5%Framing Effect15.9%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 0.2%Loss Aversion0.0%This article: 12.2%Ed Simon: 3.0%Jacobin: 0.3%Status Quo Bias12.2%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 0.2%Sunk Cost Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 1.5%Optimism Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 1.8%Pessimism Bias0.0%This article: 5.3%Ed Simon: 1.3%Jacobin: 7.9%Negativity Bias5.3%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 0.6%Self-Serving Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 1.1%Fundamental Attribution Error0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 0.2%Actor-Observer Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 1.9%In-Group Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 0.9%Out-Group Homogeneity Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 1.5%Halo Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 0.2%Horn Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 0.0%Dunning-Kruger Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 0.8%Recency Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 0.4%Primacy Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 0.1%Blind-Spot Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 1.7%Ad Hominem0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 1.2%Straw Man0.0%This article: 19.6%Ed Simon: 9.8%Jacobin: 3.2%Appeal to Authority19.6%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 2.7%False Dilemma0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 1.2%Slippery Slope0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 0.2%Circular Reasoning0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 8.1%Hasty Generalization0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 0.2%Red Herring0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 0.4%Bandwagon0.0%This article: 10.6%Ed Simon: 2.6%Jacobin: 4.7%Appeal to Emotion10.6%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 1.7%Begging the Question0.0%This article: 14.8%Ed Simon: 3.7%Jacobin: 3.6%Post Hoc (False Cause)14.8%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 0.3%Tu Quoque0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 0.3%Burden of Proof0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 0.2%Appeal to Nature0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 0.6%Composition/Division0.0%This article: 42.3%Ed Simon: 14.8%Jacobin: 2.5%Anecdotal42.3%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 0.2%No True Scotsman0.0%This article: 17.5%Ed Simon: 4.4%Jacobin: 1.6%Ambiguity (Equivocation)17.5%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 0.0%Gambler’s Fallacy0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 0.1%Middle Ground0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 0.1%Personal Incredulity0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 0.2%Special Pleading0.0%This article: 15.3%Ed Simon: 7.7%Jacobin: 0.5%Genetic Fallacy15.3%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 1.4%Unattributed Quote0.0%This article: 16.9%Ed Simon: 4.2%Jacobin: 1.0%Quote-first Misdirection16.9%This article: 10.6%Ed Simon: 5.3%Jacobin: 11.3%Biased Writer Voice10.6%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 3.3%Indoctrination0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 7.1%Politically Left Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 0.3%Politically Right Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Ed Simon: 0.0%Jacobin: 0.3%Attempt to Sell a Product or S…0.0%

189 words analyzed.

Speakers

2speakers35%attributed speech123writer words
Voice mapSelect a segment to jump to its words
Writer's voice • 10 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 32 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 10 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 23 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 20 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 28 words • 0.0% coverageAlexander Garden • 29 words • 0.0% coverageHenry Phelps Johnston • 37 words • 0.0% coverage
Selected voice

Alexander Garden

100%flagged-word coverage
29 attributed words44% of attributed speech100% writer coverage
0%15.0%30.0%Quote-first Misdirection-26.0 ptsWriter: 26.0%Alexander Garden: 0.0%0.0%Biased Writer Voice-16.3 ptsWriter: 16.3%Alexander Garden: 0.0%0.0%

Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.

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Analysis

Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.